While watching the debt ceiling increase by $2.4 trillion just to cover spending until the next presidential election, the scam perpetrated on the American people could not have been any more obvious. While the Republican-controlled House of Representatives negotiated with itself for weeks in an attempt to propose something that might save our great nation from financial disaster, neither the U.S. Senate nor the White House proposed any plan at all. Even worse, while listening to Barack Obama’s rhetoric about the need for a bipartisan solution, the Majority Leader of the Democrat-controlled Senate announced that bills coming from the House were “dead on arrival.” In fact, nothing coming from the House was even allowed to be debated by the overly partisan Senate leadership. This resulted in another crisis-not-to-be-wasted. As the administration-imposed deadline of August 2 approached, the Democrats’ rhetoric followed a familiar pattern as they attempted to frighten the American public with false accusations that grandma won’t get her medical care, seniors will lose their Social Security, sick children will be turned away, and that a major calamity will occur if no increase in the debt ceiling is approved by August 2.

In attempting to understand how and why our government has become so blatantly irresponsible, I heard an interview with Orrin Hatch on FOX News. Senator Hatch spoke of his past attempts to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment, specifically one in 1997 that failed to pass by a single vote. I could not help but wonder what that one vote would have meant to the current situation. With the debt being $5.4 trillion in 1997 and heading for $15 trillion in 2011, it is clear that holding at the 1997 levels would have assured that no crisis would have occurred and that the spending being generated by the Obama administration would have been dramatically reduced. As a result, it is important to understand who those senators were who accounted for the missing vote that would have facilitated financial soundness.

A familiar pattern was again evident. The vote was 66-34, with a super majority of 67 votes required to pass the Amendment. Upon review of the senators’ vote, it was once more aggravating to see the partisan politics that has ruled this country since the early 1990s. The “one vote” that killed the bill was cast by 34 Democrats as a block. They collectively killed the chance for financial sanity. Even more remarkable, every GOP senator voted for the bill, joined by 11 Democrats. Yet, the 34 Democrats blocked a bill that could have prevented the debt ceiling crisis of 2011.

Sadly, 18 of these 34 senators are still in the Senate, and still blocking all attempts to reduce spending and debt. This Group of 18 has destroyed the financial stability and strength of the greatest nation in history. Every American needs to know these senators, who will be listed as the “Dirty Dozen plus 6” at the end of this document.

Having documented the Democrats’ destruction of mortgage lending standards during the 1990s, this irresponsible destruction of a bipartisan Balanced Budget bill in 1997 coupled with the mortgage lending debacle should be an indictment of the entire Democratic Party. No theft of wealth at any level can even begin to approach what the Democrats and their allies in the Progressive movement have committed against our country. The Democrats have destroyed our financial reputation, the reserve status of our dollar, and are continuing reckless spending at the….